Life in France seen through the round window of a straw-built grand design.

Willkommen Bienvenue Welcome

Welcome, gentle readers.

This is an everyday tale of regular folk, who moved from Sheffield to the deepest Corrèze in France Profonde and thence to the rather more cosmopolitan Lot in search of something… different. We certainly found it.

The Lot is an area of outstanding natural beauty. Reputedly, a famous TV globetrotter was asked where, of all the places in the world he had visited, he might return to. He answered, ‘The Lot’.

Fans of Channel 4’s Grand Designs will know that we built a somewhat quirky straw bale house-with-a-view here in the Lot, not far from the celebrated Dordogne river. You can read all about it in my book, Bloody Murder On The Dog's Meadow, or watch the re-runs of the programme on More 4, or view it on You Tube.

After a break in the proceedings to write a book or two, this blog now takes the form of an everyday journal. Sometimes things happen, sometimes they don't (but the art school dance goes on forever). I hope it will give you an entertaining insight into what it's like to live in a foreign country; what it's like in the slow lane as an ex-pat Brit in deepest France.

I shall undertake to update this once or twice a week, unless absent on leave. Comments always welcomed, by the way, but I do tend to forget what buttons to click in order to answer them.

Saturday, November 25, 2017

November: Lounging Lizards and Bonding Ties

Well I woke up this
morning, and I found a lizard in my bed.../Said I woke up this morning, people,
and I found, that's right, a doggone lizard in my bed/Thinking how it got there's
sho' nuff breaking up my head...

It was only a little lizard. One of those dark green rapiettes that used to scuttle into and
out of every joint in the stone walls of our old farmhouse. People say that
cats like to eat them to stay slim. Our current killer, Otis, occasionally
finds one to mutilate, but they're a rare sight now. They were plentiful during
our tenure in the Corrèze, but these days – like every other species on earth
except for human beans, rats, flies, ants and cockroaches – their numbers have
declined to the point where they are now classified as endangered. It won't
stop Otis, just as the tragedy of elephant poaching won't stop the Trump family
from shooting some more as trophies.

Anyway, it was a shock. It's the last thing you expect to
find when you pull back the duvet to air the bed of a morning. By the time I'd
found an old card and a tumbler for removal purposes, the rapiette had scuttled under the bed. Was it one of the cats that
brought it in? Did it come in of its own volition to find a nice warm spot for
a bit of hibernation? Who knows what goes on in the mind of a lizard. Underneath
a winter-weight duvet would certainly be a cosy niche for the season.

For the season is upon us once more. I always try to
remember the 5th November. Catesby & Co. The plot to blow up
parliament in the name of the perennial religious wars. Sounds familiar. Even
the punishment of hanging, drawing and quartering the plotters, obscene as it
might have been, is probably no more brutal than what goes on in many a dark
nefarious corner of the globe.

This year our British friends, Tim and Gilly, marked the
occasion. They held what I thought was going to be an intimate little bonfire
party. Being punctual souls, we arrived at seven on the dot, having followed a
procession of two or three other cars bound for the same venue. All were driven
by Parisians with second homes and an eye on the clock. I was introduced to one
woman whose name was Daphne. I told her that our dog shared her name and I
don't know whether she was too pleased. It's
a lovely name, I hastened to add. And it is. So redolent of the British Raj
and the jolly awfulness of those times.

Unlike the Parisians, the 'Meyssac Crowd', as they are known
in these parts, kept themselves to themselves. I've given up trying to make the
effort to communicate. Parisians are easier on the frontal lobe: generally
speaking they're more widely travelled,
more educated, more cultured and less concerned with apparence. As we all gathered around a bonfire that raged as bright
and as fierce as a cliff-top beacon in Napoleonic times, the French contingent
must have wondered about this strange tradition of ours. Burning some poor Guy
in a conflagration is not a nice thing to do. A long, long time ago, I mingled
with the crowds at Lewes on the 5th to watch crazy men run about with barrels
of burning pitch strapped to their backs. Never again.

After a few desultory sparklers, we got back to the serious
business of eating, drinking and dancing. The Meyssac Crowd stayed in the
sitting room by the open fire, only to emerge like excited teenagers to shake
their booties in time to Gloria Gaynor's 'I Will Survive'. Why, I wondered
later, do people still get moved by the spirit of Gloria Gaynor and Hot
Chocolate? Nothing much has changed in that respect since the first party we
were invited to at the same venue almost 20 years ago. Which on one level is
quite reassuring, but on another is a little mystifying.

The Good Wife of La Poujade Basse came over all emotional
while talking to our host about the passage of time – and in particular the
remembrance of little children past. I think it was the first occasion that our
daughter met their daughter. They were tiny tots at the time and now, still
bosom friends, they've both blossomed into beautiful young women. Proper warms
the cockles of a parent's heart it does to witness the vicissitudes of your
progeny's friendships. The bonds that tie. Or is it the ties that bond? Or
rather, bind?

We met another nice Parisian at another occasion on another
significant date. The 11th November, Armistice Day. Waiting for the
eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month was all very well and
all very neat, but it's heartbreaking to think of all those needless deaths
when the end was in sight. None more poignant than that of Wilfred Owen, who
might have gone on to become the greatest poet in the English language had it
not been for a stray bullet during some futile face-saving mission.

This Parisian is an élu,
or elected one. Part of the mayor's team. It's one of my first perks of French
citizenship that I was invited to hob-nob with the top table on the 11th
day. The mayor invited us as citoyens
d'honneur. The commune's honoured new citizens. We waited in the wings with
a motley crowd in the car park in front of the mairie on a suitably sombre, even dismal morning. There were a few
problems with the sound system before we got underway. The mayor gave a little
address, then handed the mic over to a minion who read out each name on the war
memorial followed by the collective chant of mort pour la France. It was surprisingly moving. Maybe it was the
effect of the incantation and remembering individuals who once lived here in
the same commune rather than the faceless slaughtered multitudes.

After this, there was a recorded version of the Last Post
followed by the familiar roll of drums that ushers in the Marseillaise. Surely
our chance to shine. We had run through the words again on the drive down. But
no! It was the instrumental version. The crowd were mute. Debs reckoned it was
because we were the only ones present who can actually sing it.

Then the mayor called us up to the microphone and introduced
us with a surprisingly generous and surprisingly brief speech. Neither of us
was aware that he really knew anything about us. Fortunately I had prepared a
little address for such an eventuality. I sketched the family history and how
we came to be in this neck of the Lot. Our search in my wife's bottle-green
Beetle for a house with a septic tank et cetera. I resisted any mention of
cuisine, but did suggest – ha ha ha! – that we could bring le feeshancheeps as a cultural offering in
return for the indigenous love of nature and the land. Or térroir, to use a term often employed in viniculture (of which
there's not much in the immediate vicinity).

My little address to the multitudes went down rather well. A
round of applause chuffed me to the core. My French can't have been too bad. Afterwards,
we trooped inside the mairie and his
worship's team passed around the appetisers, which were mainly pâté-laden bits
of unappetising bread. For maybe the first time in my tenure here, and maybe
fortified by my new official standing, I felt able to turn them down on the
grounds that ours was a vegetarian family. The servers looked a trifle surprised,
but didn't direct us to the naughty-step. Food for thought, I considered. It
would do them good to know – and even reflect. Who knows, in another decade's
time, they might hand around pieces of bread bedecked with tapinade. Green or black, I'm happy with either.

Now,
the end of the month is nigh. We've had about two days of genuine cold. Not
even a snap-ette, really. The leaves are the colour of copper and the
temperature's unseasonably high. In another few weeks, 't'will be Christmas –
and already local villages have decked their main streets with electronic
decorations. Couldn't they at least wait till December? Everything is
topsy-turvy and up the Suwannee River. Pity those poor lizards, who will be
emerging from their duvets, believing that that a false spring has sprung.

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Camp Street

About Me

Born in London, raised in Belfast, further-educated at Exeter and Sussex universities, I'm a professional dilettante, a family man and tireless dog-walker. You can listen to Lost & Found, my monthly radio show on www.expatsradio.com and check out my author page on Amazon.